Die Letzte Tag
by L-Ishida-Dark
Summary: As Remus faces death in the final battle, he remembers what brought him this far. DH SPOILERS, TonksxLupinxSirius OneShot


WARNING: Contains spoilers for Deathly Hallows and all the previous books. Also contains one naughty word ::gasp::

WAHHHHH, my second favourite HP pairing died a few books after my favourite! DAMN YOU JK!!!! I've been sad about that for months.

And yes, I support both Remus/Sirius and Remus/Tonks. Got a problem with that?

As for the title, don't ask. I'm listening to Tokio Hotel right now, and I had no name for this fic, so Die Letzte Tag it is.

_Das ist die letzte Tag fur mich…_

Harry Potter is © JK Rowling

Running. The faces of children and adults and Death Eaters flash past me like a film on fast forward. I don't care if I die, as long as they survive, my friends and those children. If the children can grow up in a world without the Dark Lord, then it's worth my life. I scream spell after spell, my throat dry, sweat pouring from my brow. The Death Eater points his wand at me. I can't move, lying on the floor, helpless. Nothing can save me. I've always wondered what it's like to die. And perhaps…perhaps I'll see him again.

_Wand to wand, my eyes don't waver from the crazed eyes of my opponent. I can't lose this match, a staring contest with so much at stake. But I hear her insane whoops from across the echoing room, and I can almost feel his grim determination. I waver. I look to the battle raging near the billowing gauze, and from the corner of my eye I glimpse my opponent surging forward to take advantage of my distraction._

_Later, I'll wonder. If he hadn't looked, if I hadn't been there, if he, like me, hadn't taken his eyes off his opponent, would I still be hearing his voice, feeling his touch, looking into his grey eyes? Would he be fighting next to me in the Second War? His eyes widen in shock, he stumbles back, clutching at nothingness as the veil twitches and swirls behind him. Somewhere off the edge of my perception, Bellatrix cackles her contempt, but all I see, all I hear, all I feel is the man I love more than anything, the last link to those days when the four of us laughed together, my heart, my world, my everything. He falls so, so slowly, as James' son screams his name and my throat is too full of tears to even cry. But in my mind, he falls again and again, and I can't turn back time to just a few minutes ago, when we were together and just in time and it would all be all right…_

_Next to my ear, a cold voice calls the killing curse. "AVADRA KED…"_

_I can't move, paralysed by anger and sorrow, drowning in my tears. I'm going to die. But before the word is finished, a huge black fist knocks the air from the Death Eater's lungs, and I surface, to a bleak world of screams and bright light and hot tears. Sirius is gone. I launch myself into the fray again, screaming out my anger and my emptiness in spells. It doesn't matter if I die, I'll avenge Sirius, I'll kill Bellatrix and Malfoy and all their fucking cronies if it takes everything I've got. And some day when I see him again, I'll be able to look into his eyes and swear to my oldest friend and my first love, "This time I helped you out."_

I guess that day's finally come. It won't be long now before I can see him again, run my hands through his long hair, tell him I love him and I did it all for him, tell him I died for him. I close my eyes. I'm ready.

But she's there, behind my eyelids, holding our child. She was always there, making me see things through.

_After the Department of Mysteries, I barely spoke, moved or ate for weeks, just enough to keep me alive. When I stood in front of the mirror, I could see my ribs poking through my fragile flesh, as skinny as if I was already dead. I knew I should come out of my shell, knew I should rejoin the fight for Sirius' sake and the sake of the Order, knew I had to face the truth, but it was hard. So hard. I had nothing left to live for, so I wasted away, sitting alone in my room in the house that never belonged to Sirius, was never his home. But we could have made it his, could have filled the house with our love, could have done so much if it wasn't for that day._

_I filled the emptiness with dreams and memories and alcohol, drinking glass after glass as if drinking enough could somehow drown the pain. I couldn't live without him, I'd already lost so much. To have him back after so long, to know our love and friendship was no lie, to kiss him again after so many years apart and then to have him snatched back, held just out of reach, one last reminder of what I'm missing…that was unbearable. To the children, to James' son, I pretended I was still alive, but I felt dead inside, and seeing Harry was such a potent reminder of what I once had. _

"_He's not James!" I lost track of the number of times I've told Sirius that, but now, with my link to the past and my hope for the future gone, all I see when I look at that boy is the memory of years past, when we were young and never thought we'd betray each other, or that we could ever die, and all that mattered were exams and pranks and does-she-love-me and each other. _

_So I avoided him, avoided them all, and I sat on the end of my bed staring into the past, pretending that this was the illusion and the dream was what was real. Eighteen days I sat like that, coming when called, staying alone when I could._

_And then she came._

_I'd known her so long, since she was about ten or eleven, close to the age of starting Hogwarts. I'd never thought of her as a friend, more as a teammate, a colleague, someone I would never speak to if it weren't for the horrors of the world. But I knew she cared about me from the moment she swung the door to my sanctuary open and sat down next to me. She was the first among the Order to see how much I ached inside, every member so wrapped up in their private pain and fear they had no time for mine. But although she was so young, although she'd already seen things no one her age should have to see, like we had when we were young and idealistic and thought we could change the world, although she must have been more afraid than anyone else she still came looking for me. She still wanted me. _

_That day I found my new reason to live._

It's only been two years or so since then, but so much has happened it feels like a million lifetimes. So I've fought my share of nightmares, felt my share of love, lived my share of life. I've loved not one, but two people more than life itself, with a fierce love, with a gentle touch that awakened more feeling than anything, with blood and kisses and hearts broken and hearts fixed…I've had my share and more. Both times, I was so slow to realise what I felt, so reluctant to give in to my heart.

_She'd confessed her love, thrown herself on my mercy, but I knew I couldn't allow myself to feel this way. I couldn't love two people at once, and giving in to this feeling, wouldn't it mean erasing what I'd felt for Sirius, so deep and complex and multi-layered, that had been growing gradually since we met all those years ago, that couldn't be cut off by his disappearance, that had risen guiltily when I thought he betrayed us, that had made me cry and laugh and fight, that I felt even after he was gone…would loving her make that vanish? Would a relationship formed on lust and made to fill gaps in our souls, a relationship that would become so passionate and so blindingly bright eclipse the deep, deep love I held for Sirius? It felt so like change, out with the old, in with the new. It felt like betrayal._

_But somewhere along the line, it happened. As buildings fell and friends died and children screamed and everything stable in our lives crumbled, my heart found something new to cling to. I found myself drawn closer and closer to her, and she, for all her ineptness and clumsiness and irregularity, kept me going. She was my rock, a very strange, loose-foundationed, reactionary rock, but still she kept me strong and I couldn't have made it through that terrible time without her._

_And Dumbledore was dead; it felt like everything I had ever taken for granted was being swept away from under me. Sirius gone, Voldemort returned, the only man the Dark Lord had ever feared dead, the Order surely on the brink of collapse without him…the world was changing, and she held my hand. The past was dead, and she was the future._

_That day in the forest, in funeral robes, her hair black, I told her I loved her. And it was only after I said it, after I looked into her shocked face under her suddenly bright pink fringe, that I realised I hadn't lied. And I kissed her for the first but by no means the last time, and as the black-draped coffin passed as we sat in the grounds on that tear-filled summer day, I held her hand tight._

I'd worried so much. She was too young, too different, too easily hurt. I thought the worry would stop after I gave in to my feelings, but there was so much to worry about. The Death Eater steps forward, his mouth already forming the words that will end my life. I guess I needn't worry any more.

_The wedding was beautiful. She was so radiant, her hair the colour of the roses she carried, pink against the bright white of her dress, her face fresh and bright as she smiled at me. I felt unworthy, old and scruffy in my only set of dress robes, and I thought of Sirius, and I thought of her, and they melted together in my mind. They were just my love, deep in my heart. I don't know if that makes sense, but that's how it felt. And on that day, when our world was bright for just one moment in time, when all the friends that were left smiled at us, when the sun shone over green meadows, I gave that love to her to keep and we sealed it with a kiss and the thin bands of gold on our fingers._

_I couldn't believe my luck. Despite the war, despite the death, despite everything, I was happy. And when I remembered Sirius, and my heart overflowed with sorrow, she was there to kiss away my tears. And sometimes my mind lingered on Sirius, and sometimes it was just her. _

_And then she told me, and my world, the lie I'd told myself that nothing mattered, the dream that my lycanthropy meant nothing in this new life, was shattered. I was scared. I was scared and angry at myself for letting myself get into this situation, and I took it out on her. Sorry, Tonks. _

_On that day, I ran, so afraid I had brought darkness and death to the lives of the very people I'd sworn to protect. For the first time since the Marauders saved me, I felt truly like something evil. Like a virus, I'd wormed my way into the Order, made them think I was a true human, on their side, made Tonks love me, made Sirius love me…and there was something growing now, a tiny person, my child, who would keep my terrible blood alive. So I ran, I screamed into the darkness, and on that day I realised what kind of person James' son was. Not James, not Lily, but himself, a unique person and a young adult._

_I was still afraid, still angry, but I returned. I cried. I cried so much, when no one could see my tears, and his my sorrow with battle, like I had after Sirius went through the veil. Even then, I was still pretending I could turn back time, that I could go back to when me and Sirius laughed together, kissing in the boy's toilets, sitting by the lake together. _

_But when I saw my son's chubby face for the first time, when his tiny hand with those creases so delicate they looked like they were tied with angel hair yanked my messy brown hair and poked at my face in confusion, when I looked into his innocent eyes, I knew I never wanted to go back. _

We have to look ahead to after the war, my wife, my son and me. We have to keep going. Me and Tonks have to fight so our Teddy, our future, our child, can live those days again for me, laughing and loving and worrying over schoolwork and friends.

Sorry, Sirius. I'll see you again sometime, but not today. I have to go on living, now and tomorrow, to see my son become as wonderful as you were.

Somehow my hand finds my wand, and with all the fierce love I once used to kiss, to comfort, to hold, I send a beam of red light shooting towards the Death Eater. He falls back, Stupefied. And I'm up again, running, fighting, the fire of my feelings burning its way through my enemies. They're killing children, Sirius. They're killing my friends. They're trying to kill my future. If I have to take them all down myself, they won't ever hurt my son. I already let that happen to you, Sirius. I won't let them take anything else away from me.

But I see them, even if she doesn't. Two Death Eaters, faces hidden by black cowls, stand behind Tonks. She's fighting for her life, but they're raising their wands behind her, as lazily as if they were doing nothing more than learning how to use a spell in school.

_That same look in Bellatrix's eyes, the total contempt as you wavered and fell and I couldn't save you, as I stood there helpless unable even to save my own miserable skin. Sirius, I'm not going to feel that pain again. Never. This time, there will be no one to comfort me, no one to hold my hand, no one to make me want to live again. If I let Tonks die, I have no purpose any more._

I dive into the fight, throwing aside the black-hooded figure who tries to stop me as I scream her name, tackling the two attackers. One I knock out with a fist to the head, and it's a test of reactions with the next, a race to shout the spell first.

"STUPEFY!"

The Death Eater keels over. I kick her as hard as I can, channelling out my loss and my love into pure battle instinct. I turn to finish off the wizard who was with her.

Who isn't there any more.

Before I can raise my wand to protect myself, a beam of green light strikes my chest. No more miraculous escapes, no more running and hiding and fighting. No more. My vision grows dim. I hear Tonks shouting my name from so many miles away, can feel her tears drip onto my face, but I can't reach out, I can't touch her face, I can't hold her hand and tell her everything will be all right. She cries for revenge, her voice is fading, my heart is slowing, my eyes are clouding over.

I'm coming, Sirius.


End file.
